


Healthy Mistrust

by linndechir



Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-18 10:42:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20637860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/pseuds/linndechir
Summary: Geoffrey has been keeping an eye on Reid, to see if he's really the decent man he claims to be - and to be ready to kill him when the leech inevitably slips up.





	Healthy Mistrust

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thedevilchicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/gifts).

“Do you really believe I didn’t notice that you’ve been following me?”

Damn leech had sneaked up on him. Geoffrey spun around, his crossbow a reassuring weight against his left forearm. It didn’t escape him that Reid could have simply attacked him from behind if that had been his plan, but he didn’t let that stop him from grabbing him by the tie and slamming him into the nearest wall. Reid let him, and that he was _letting_ him only irked Geoffrey more. Along with the fact that he hated being caught by surprise. Even most leeches wouldn’t have been able to, but Reid … Reid wasn’t like any other leech Geoffrey had ever had the misfortune of encountering. More powerful than the rest of his ilk. And if one were to believe him, far more moral.

Geoffrey didn’t make a habit of believing leeches anything, even the ones who had, admittedly, done some good. Like sparing his life, or stopping whatever the hell had been going on in London, or continuing to work as a doctor in a still disease-riddled city. It didn’t mean much. He was well aware that leeches weren’t mere animals – they’d been human once, and like humans, they could save a starving child in one moment and commit the vilest act of sadism in the next. It’s what made them far more dangerous than any animal – the ability to lie, to manipulate, to deceive. So well that they might even believe it themselves sometimes.

“I wasn’t trying not to be noticed,” Geoffrey said, his face close to Reid’s. To those damn bright eyes, the blueish veins on his forehead, the waxy pallor of his skin. Even through his suit and coat, his body felt like ice. Geoffrey hated that he had to look up at him. “I want you to know that Priwen is keeping an eye on you.”

Geoffrey himself, mostly. Reid was dangerous, and if anyone had to bring him down, Geoffrey knew he’d have to do it himself. He’d lost enough men recently. And while Reid had defeated him once before, Geoffrey had always made sure to learn from his mistakes. The next time they fought, Reid wouldn’t walk away from it.

“I thought you’d called off your Great Hunt.” Reid’s voice was smooth and polished, that unfazed posh tone that Geoffrey would have hated even from someone who wasn’t a leech. As if he had no care in the world, as if nothing could possibly touch him. As if Geoffrey’s firm grip on his throat was a mere inconvenience – and it was nothing more, wasn’t it, when Geoffrey knew too well what the leech could do to him. Grow claws and skewer him. Rip the blood right out of his body. Simply pick him up and break his spine like a twig.

“That just means I won’t kill every one of your kind on sight,” he said. “Not that you’re free to do as you please without us interfering. I don’t want you forgetting that we haven’t gone anywhere.”

Reid’s lips curled, parted to reveal one of his fangs. Everything he did was far too calculated for that to be an accident.

“And what has your impromptu voyeurism told you about me?”

Geoffrey fought the urge to slam the cross around his neck right into Reid’s smug face. The burn would heal, but at least he’d feel better. Because the truth was that Reid seemed to be exactly what he claimed to be – a decent man, trying to help this city. He spent his nights at Pembroke Hospital, operating on war invalids or injured workers. He made house calls to the sick, including in parts of town that most doctors wouldn’t think to set foot in, and most of the time he didn’t even accept payment for it. He still lived in the same house he’d inhabited when he’d been mortal, with an old mother he sometimes bought flowers for and a butler who was almost as ancient as her, neither of whom he seemed to use as convenient blood bags. The one time Geoffrey had seen him kill a man, it had been a pimp in the worst part of the Whitechapel who made a habit of beating his girls black and blue if they didn’t bring him enough money every night. If anything, Reid had done the city a favour by ridding it of that scum. And if he’d drunk his fill while doing so, with that mad hunger in his eyes that made Geoffrey want to reconsider putting them all down … he’d still been controlled enough not to bite anyone else before that, or after.

“That you noticed me watching and behaved,” was all he said, and Reid scoffed at him. His nostrils flared for a moment, his gaze flicked down. An uncomfortable tension crept down Geoffrey’s spine.

“You’re bleeding,” Reid said. He managed to keep his voice even – a doctor’s professional observation, as if the scent didn’t cloud his mind.

“It’s taken care of.” A long scratch across his side from an encounter with a feral Skal the night before. It hadn’t been deep, just deep enough to bleed and ruin yet another shirt. He’d have to buy a few new ones, the next time he got his hands on a bit of money that wasn’t needed for food and bullets. But the wound had been hurting like hell all night, and he’d already suspected he’d torn the stitches.

“Not very well. Did you even see a doctor or did you have one of your men patch you up?” Reid sighed. “We’re not far from my house. I keep some first-aid supplies there. And don’t give me that paranoid look, McCullum, I’m not stupid. I’m sure your men know where you are and what you’re doing. I might not like you much, but I certainly don’t dislike you enough to risk all of Priwen with pitchforks and flamethrowers at my front door just for a chance to be rid of you.”

It was a good enough point – whatever else Reid was, he was certainly careful – but Geoffrey’s skin still crawled at the idea of being helpless and alone with a leech while he was bleeding. On the other hand, the last time he’d ignored one of his wounds for too long, he’d ended up in bed for a week with a fever that had almost killed him, and he couldn’t afford to repeat that. Maybe it could be another test, to see just how far Reid’s self-control went.

“Fine,” he said, gave Reid another little shove before he let go of him and stepped back. “But you so much as twitch in a way I don’t like –”

“– and you’ll kill me in dreadful ways, yes, yes, I heard you before.” Reid adjusted his tie with a relaxed gesture. “Let’s go then, shall we?”

* * *

Reid’s house was in a part of town that Geoffrey usually stayed away from unless he had a damn good reason. People tended to call the police on him, half the time because of his worn clothes, half the time because of his accent. He didn’t look like a servant or a tradesman, and the kind of people Reid called his neighbours – the kind of people Reid belonged to – couldn’t fathom any other reason why a man like him would sully their streets. 

It was late enough that nobody was out and about to give them strange looks, although Geoffrey did wonder what Reid’s peers thought about his strange new habits. His odd hours, his refusal to attend dinner parties, his reclusion. Maybe they put it all on the war. Enough soldiers had come back changed and Reid was probably not even the strangest of them.

Reid’s butler greeted them at the door, but didn’t remark on the unusual company Reid kept. As far as Geoffrey had been able to tell, the leech didn’t exactly make a habit of taking people home. His mother had the occasional visitor, but Reid mostly kept to himself. Geoffrey would have wondered if avoiding people was a way to avoid temptation, but he did spend his waking hours around the sick and injured. A way of punishing himself then, maybe – self-loathing wasn’t exactly rare among leeches, although few of them had the good sense to just kill themselves once they’d realised what disgusting abominations they were.

Reid took him up to his study – beautiful mahogany furniture, modern electric lights, expensive curtains, and a fire crackling in the fireplace. It felt like a different world than the cheap boarding rooms and abandoned warehouses Geoffrey slept in most of the time. Beautiful, comfortable, lulling him into a false sense of safety and peace.

“Sit,” Reid said, and out of principle Geoffrey didn’t until after he’d left the room. The armchair was almost unbearably soft after another long night, but he didn’t allow himself to close his eyes. Reid came back only a few minutes later, without his jacket, the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up and his hands scrubbed clean, carrying a bowl of warm water and a doctor’s bag. In the warm light of the room he looked almost human, at least until he was close enough that Geoffrey could see the eerie, too smooth quality of his skin again.

“Undress, please,” he said in that smooth, deep voice, and something prickled on the back of Geoffrey’s neck, unwanted thoughts creeping into his mind. He must have hesitated for too long because Reid raised an impatient eyebrow, “I can’t very well tend to your wound through your clothes.”

Geoffrey wanted to argue, irrationally, but now that he’d come here, he might as well actually take advantage of Reid’s skills. His tired body ached when he stood again, and he never took his eyes off Reid while he stripped off his jacket, sat his weapons down on the ornate coffee table, and then slowly pulled off his shirt. This one was ruined, too. The bandage on his side was bled through, and Geoffrey winced in pain when Reid pulled it off.

His expression was disapproving, but instead of commenting he simply made Geoffrey sit back down and went to one knee to start cleaning the wound. The look on his face was one of professional concentration, but his nostrils kept flaring, and every now and then he licked his lips as if he could taste the smell of blood in the air.

“Watch yourself, leech,” Geoffrey said – almost automatically, but it made his skin crawl to have those fangs so near his bleeding, vulnerable side. And at the same time, there was a different kind of tingling in his nerves when he looked at Reid, when he felt those elegant, nimble fingers brush over sensitive skin that hadn’t been touched in … too long, really. That was all. 

“I’d be a rather bad surgeon if I couldn’t resist eating my patients,” Reid said a bit testily. “Although still not as bad as whatever quack tried to stitch this up. Hold still, this will hurt a little.”

It occurred to Geoffrey then that Reid’s quite well-stocked little bag probably held some anaesthetics, but Reid clearly wasn’t above a certain measure of pettiness. No matter, Geoffrey could stand a little pain. Maybe it would do him some good, make him think about something other than the way Reid’s left palm pressed against his side, his fingers steady and right now pleasantly cold as he first put the needle into Geoffrey’s skin.

“I noticed you don’t take payment when you make your house calls,” Geoffrey said, his voice tight with pain. He pushed through it, the way he always did. “Especially from the whores. I’m sure they’d be very eager to show you their gratitude.”

Enough leeches liked to indulge in all kinds of debauchery, blood and sex and cruelty all mixed together, because why deny themselves anything if they were already beasts? But he hadn’t seen Reid indulge even once, when taking advantage would have been so very easy.

Reid’s fingers stilled and he looked up, raising one eyebrow in pointed surprise. If he’d been human, he would have been handsome, Geoffrey supposed. Handsome in a proper, masculine kind of way, not like those skinny boys at the docks Geoffrey went to sometimes when he couldn’t bear it anymore, when his skin felt too tight and he needed something other than his own hand touching him for once. He didn’t like doing it, but he’d clearly put it off for too long, if he caught himself thinking the damn _leech_ was good-looking. 

“It wouldn’t have occurred to me to ask them for payment of any kind,” Reid said, his voice sharper than before. Maybe Geoffrey imagined it, but the next time the needle went into his skin, it stung more than before. Reid licked his lips again. 

“Why, you prefer boys?” Geoffrey went on. “Not like there aren’t enough of those in London, too.” Maybe he was trying to get him angry, to see if Reid would lose his temper, if he’d show him some other side than that polished, flawless façade. The noble, honourable gentleman who only cared about helping others. It was bullshit, it had to be. 

Reid looked at him again, and something about that expression of his made Geoffrey shift uncomfortably. He knew leeches couldn’t read people’s minds – mesmerise them into confessing to things they’d otherwise never say out loud, yes, but not actually read their minds – but it felt like it in that moment. For a second Geoffrey worried that Reid would ask him how exactly he knew that, and then Geoffrey would have had to break his nose, and then he’d definitely be bleeding all over himself.

“What I _prefer_, if you must know, is people who actually desire my company,” Reid said primly, and Geoffrey couldn’t help but notice that he hadn’t said “women”, that he hadn’t bothered to defend his good name. Perhaps a man as rich as Reid didn’t care, or perhaps he simply didn’t think Geoffrey’s opinion of him mattered enough to correct him. “But you don’t really care either way, do you, McCullum? You’re just desperately looking for some filthy, sinful secrets I’m hiding so you can feel justified in your hatred for me.”

He went back to his sutures, every touch so certain, so skilled. And it wasn’t that there was no hunger in his eyes, or that his lips weren’t parted like he couldn’t manage to hide those repulsive fangs of his – but he didn’t let that stop him. Like a well-trained dog salivating over its dinner, but too obedient to eat without his master’s permission. The thought burrowed itself into Geoffrey’s mind, into his own filthy, sinful secrets, making him wonder if Reid would be this controlled in other desires as well. He swallowed.

“I don’t need to justify my hatred for a leech.” It sounded weak even to his own ears, and Reid didn’t even bother replying to it. He tied off the suture thread carefully, but instead of immediately taking a bandage from the bag, he leant back a little, still on his knees, looking down at his bloodied fingers. For all his talk about control, that veneer of gentlemanly control, he looked transfixed.

“Reid,” Geoffrey said, half a question and half a warning, his right hand moving over to the crossbow on the table. 

But Reid didn’t attack him. He looked up at Geoffrey with blood-shot eyes, and then he raised his own hand to his lips and licked Geoffrey’s blood off his index finger. He wasn’t even trying to hide it, wasn’t turning away or leaving the room, no, he looked him right in the eye as he tasted his blood. And he didn’t even stop when Geoffrey put the crossbow in his face.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Geoffrey was uncomfortably aware of his own position – shirtless, weakened, in pain. Even if he got a bolt right between Reid’s eyes, it wouldn’t be enough to put down an Ekon that powerful for good.

Reid didn’t even blink. He put two fingers against the side of the crossbow and effortlessly pushed it to the side, just far enough that the tip of the bolt pointed past his head, and then he licked once again over his finger. A small sound escaped his lips then, not quite a moan, but close enough.

“It’s already, ah, left your body. I’d consider it quite the waste to wash it down the drain.” For the first time tonight his voice didn’t sound so perfectly controlled. There was a small tremor in it, something closer to lust than hunger. He sounded … he sounded _filthy_, as if it was something very different he was licking off his fingers, kneeling in front of Geoffrey like this, looking up at him. And then he wrapped his lips around his fingertip, and God help him, but Geoffrey couldn’t suppress a shudder at the sight. 

“You do that after you operate on your patients, too?” he asked. Anything to take his mind off his own thoughts.

“If the opportunity presents itself. Of course not when they or any of my colleagues would see, but I hardly need to hide what I am from you.” Reid moved on to his middle finger, his lips snatching a small drop of blood from his knuckle. 

“I still didn’t need to see this.”

“I assumed you’d mind more if I tried to do it surreptitiously. I had no intention of deceiving you.” Reid’s lips quirked into a little smile, that confident, almost smug expression that bothered Geoffrey almost as much as the fangs. “Consider it payment for services rendered.”

“I thought you didn’t want payment.” Geoffrey felt a hint of heat in his cheeks that he tried to put on the warmth from the fire, or maybe a hint of fever from his injury. Over the past weeks, he’d watched more than once as Reid gently disentangled himself from grateful whores he’d treated or saved, who were trying to throw their haggard bodies at him, probably dreaming of a nice, cosy future as a wealthy doctor’s mistress. _Payment._ He’d rather cut off his own cock than put it anywhere near that leech’s teeth. 

“I make an exception for men who go so out of their way to annoy me,” Reid said, though he sounded more amused than genuinely irritated. His tongue sneaked out to lick over the tip of his ring finger, circling it once before he seemed content he’d caught every last drop of blood, and there was no damn way he wasn’t doing this on purpose. The only thing about this that didn’t seem calculated was another quiet sigh that left his lips.

Geoffrey heaved himself out of that far too comfortable armchair, stumbling a little when he stood. He didn’t know what kind of game Reid was playing, but he wanted no part in it. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have wondered if the leech was messing with his mind. But Geoffrey had had countless Ekons try to mesmerise him, he’d built up enough of a resistance to notice. This particular dark and dirty corner of his mind, one no confession and no priest’s advice had ever been able to rid him of, that was not something he could blame on Reid.

“Stop it,” he choked out, not even sure if he meant Reid tasting his blood or Reid looking at him like that, like he _knew_. 

“It’s really quite harmless,” Reid said and gave him a look that was probably meant to come across as innocent, before he stood as well. Pulled himself up to his full height, a casual reminder that he was taller than Geoffrey, stronger too, more powerful. “Certainly preferable to me biting innocents. Don’t go anywhere, I still need to bandage that.”

Just like that he looked like the helpful, trustworthy doctor again, except for how he kept licking his lips every now and then, like he was chasing the phantom taste of Geoffrey’s blood on them. He was hardly the first leech who’d ever tasted him – getting bitten was unavoidable when fighting vampires, although Geoffrey took some pride in the fact that he didn’t have a single scar on his neck – but he was most certainly the first leech who was apparently getting away with it.

In a sudden fit of morbid curiosity, he asked, “Does different people’s blood actually taste different?”

He’d read about it, in diaries and other documents written by leeches, and he’d always thought it was pretentious bullshit. Beasts pretending to be men, treating human beings like vintages to be tasted and tried. Reid looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, then went back to getting the bandages from his bag. He didn’t speak until he’d stepped close to Geoffrey again, his hands as distractingly cold on Geoffrey’s skin as before.

“Quite so, yes. The biggest difference is health, actually – the stronger, the healthier an individual is, the better their blood tastes. But there are … other factors as well.”

He didn’t expand on that, seemed fully focused now on bandaging Geoffrey’s wound. Geoffrey doubted he needed all of his admittedly considerable skill for that, which meant that he was trying to avoid this particular topic.

“Like what?”

Reid’s hand came to rest right underneath the bandage, just above the waistband of Geoffrey’s trousers. The whole flat of his palm, his fingertips exerting a gentle pressure. His touch felt so very different from before – none of that polite professionalism, never touching him more than he had to. This was lingering, deliberate, and Geoffrey felt his heartbeat spike. He tried to clamp down on that sudden feeling of fear and anger and something far worse, because he knew that the leech could _see_ his heart, the blood pulsing through his veins. They were so close that the coldness of Reid’s body almost made Geoffrey shiver, despite the warmth in the room and the flush on his skin. 

“I believe,” Reid said slowly, and he wasn’t looking at Geoffrey’s neck, but at his lips, “I believe you don’t truly want to know the answer to that.”

For a moment he looked like he was going to leave it at that, but instead he leant closer still, his lips near Geoffrey’s ear – near his neck, too, and even hours later Geoffrey wouldn’t have been able to say why he’d held still in that moment instead of bringing some distance between them as fast as possible. Reid’s voice was quiet now – a low, silky register that didn’t need any of his unnatural powers to sound seductive. It made Geoffrey want to put a knife through the bastard’s throat.

“If you’re asking if you taste good – you do. Delicious, actually. I could drink every last drop of you and still want more.” Reid turned his head just a fraction, but it was enough for his beard to brush over the shell of Geoffrey’s ear. That little touch finally seemed to tear Geoffrey out of whatever mad reverie he’d fallen into, because he flinched and made two quick steps backwards, away from Reid’s damned voice and whatever sick game he was playing. 

Reid was raising his hands now – clean, pale, not a drop of blood left on them – in an innocent gesture of surrender.

“But I won’t, because despite what you believe, I am not a monster. And despite all your faults, neither are you.” He sounded like himself again, calm and unperturbed, like they were having a friendly chat on a cemetery. 

“And you’re the expert on monsters, aren’t you,” Geoffrey said – much easier to talk about that than about Reid’s previous comments. The word _delicious_ kept echoing through his mind, accompanied by the image of Reid on his knees, lips wrapped around his fingers, handsome and powerful, and maybe that was what it would take for Geoffrey to have him at his mercy … 

“I know it’s not the fangs that make the monster,” Reid said. He handed Geoffrey his shirt, no doubt enjoying the reluctance on his face before Geoffrey put down the crossbow to get dressed. 

“I could lend you one without blood stains on it, but I have a feeling you wouldn’t accept. And it wouldn’t quite fit you,” Reid added.

Geoffrey scoffed, but he much preferred Reid being a petty arse over what he’d been doing before. He buttoned his shirt quickly, then wrapped his scarf back around his neck. He knew it wasn’t much of a protection against a vampire’s teeth, although it did make it harder for them to bite him in a fight, but he certainly felt better with his throat covered. While he put his jacket back on, Reid pulled a small bottle of pills from his doctor’s bag.

“Painkillers,” he explained and handed them over. “One in the morning, one at night, and don’t take them for longer than a few days. No strenuous physical activity for at least a week if you actually want the wound to heal. Preferably longer, but I know you.”

The only reason Geoffrey didn’t argue was because he knew Reid was right. He pocketed the painkillers – he wasn’t so suicidal that he’d cloud his mind in the presence of a leech, or right before a walk home through nightly London. That’d just be it, to survive a lifetime of vampire hunting only to get his brain bashed in by a thug while he was drugged.

“Let me guess – following you counts as strenuous physical activity?” Geoffrey asked. Reid smiled, as if he’d expected the question.

“Quite. You know, you could simply accompany me. That way you’d be sure I’m not secretly murdering someone every time you blink, and you wouldn’t have to climb over roofs for it.” He made it sound like a perfectly reasonable invitation. The leader of Priwen and the most powerful leech in England, taking a stroll through London together. It sounded like the beginning of a tasteless joke.

Carl had always warned him not to trust leeches – not even the friendly ones, the reasonable ones, the smiling ones. The ones who claimed to be just normal people, afflicted by a terrible curse and trying to make the best of their situation. Sometimes they meant it. Sometimes they managed to stay good and truthful and strong for months, even years. But sooner or later their nature came through, and if you weren’t ready then, if you’d started trusting them somewhere on the way, you’d be their first victim. Leeches were like men in all the worst ways, and beneath that they were beasts. Cruel, blood-hungry, wild. Elegant suits, careful hands and a voice that made Geoffrey’s breath catch didn’t change that.

It’d be good to continue to keep an eye on Reid, and if Reid wanted to make it easier for him, all the better. Maybe that’d lull _him_ into a false sense of security. That way, when the time came to put Reid down, perhaps the leech wouldn’t see it coming.

“I’ll think about it,” Geoffrey said. Judging by the surprised look on his face, Reid hadn’t expected anything but a clear refusal.

Downstairs, Reid’s butler helped him into his coat as if Geoffrey weren’t capable of doing that by himself, though his impression of the rich was that they were in fact incapable of even getting dressed on their own.

“If you permit my saying so, Mr McCullum,” the butler said just as Geoffrey was about to leave, “I am glad to see Dr Reid is making new friends. He could do with company besides his patients and his dear mother.”

Geoffrey was almost impressed by the lack of sneering – in his experience the only people more snobbish than the rich were the ones working for the rich, who somehow thought polishing particularly expensive boots elevated them above the rest of the poor – but he still wasn’t going to let that particular insinuation slide.

“I wouldn’t exactly call us friends.”

It had been the wrong thing to say, because the butler’s – Avery, his name had been, Geoffrey remembered – face lost its carefully neutral expression for a moment, he faltered as if looking for words, and then settled for a very stiff, “I see. Of course.”

Geoffrey felt himself flush when he realised just what it was Avery was assuming – and wondered what kind of _company_ Reid had kept in the past for him to assume that – and since he had no idea how to correct him without admitting he knew exactly what he meant, he settled for a quick exit into the cold night air to clear his head.

And the next time he saw the leech, he sure as hell wasn’t going to follow him home.


End file.
